Toreutics

The article presents the silver gilt phalerae found in the course of earthworks in the area of Kuban stanitza Uspenskaya in 1866 and now kept in the State Museum of Georgia. The central part of two large phalerae is decorated with rosettes framed with garland, the sloping middle part — with curly rosettes, the edge bent outwards — with guilloche pattern. The small phalera bears a bull protome with small curly rosettes on the forehead and on the shoulder. The compositional and stylistic analysis of the large phalerae causes doubts in M. Pfrommer’s attribution considering the Uspenskaya phalerae to have been later specimens (2nd century BC) made after some earlier prototypes. Their most probable date may be restricted to the period of the last quarter of the 3rd — first quarter of the 2nd century BC. It is evident that the large shoulder phalerae from Uspenskaya (Figs. 1–4) like that from Fedulov Treasure having similar dimensions (ca. 30–31 сm in diameter) (Fig. 7) belong to the earliest finds of that kind in the North Pontic area as it was suggested by V.I. Mordvintseva. The high level of their execution differs greatly from that of the speci
mens dated to the 2nd — early 1st century BC. The phalerae from Uspenskaya had been probably long time in use, judging by the losses and remains of careful restoration, as a result of which the tornoff part of one of the phalerae was «sewn» to its main
part (figs. 1; 3. 3; 4). A bull protome on the Bosporan coins similar to the one on the small phalera can hardly be a decisive argument in favour of its attribution as a Bosporan article. It is rather an ornamental ropelike border, which speaks in favour
of such a hypothesis. The character of the surface treatment suggests manufacturing of the large phalerae with rosettes and the small one with the bull protome in different workshops. Having in mind the suggested dating of the phalerae, with all the reservations against the total attribution of imports uncovered in the Sarmatian complexes as booty captured by the Sarmatians in Asia Minor, in the given case one cannot exclude the possibility of the large phalerae being a diplomatic gift received during concluding a treaty between the King of Pontus, Phranakes I and the states of Asia Minor, one of the guarantor of which, according to Polybius (Polyb., XXV, 2), was a Sarmatian King Gatal.

A Roman relief mirror in Munich shows the scene with the highest known number of individuals of the whole genre. Within the scope of a detailed analysis an interpretation as the Pygmalion myth is suggested and a date for the mirror in the Augustan period is proposed for discussion. The Munich Mirror can be related to other metalwork of this period and proved to be a further example for the translation of mythological themes into the iconographic language of Augustan classicism.

Una lettura inedita dell'anfora d'argento di Baratti (IV secolo), reperto simbolo del  museo archeologico di Piombino e per adesso esemplare unico, dove nella terza fascia sono rappresentati ben tre miti di trasformazione di esseri sfortunati in piante e fiori per mano divina. Si parlerà dei miti di Apollo e Dafne, di Apollo e Giacinto e di Cibele e Attis, e si darà un senso alla loro presenza su questo prezioso quanto complesso oggetto.

Please, consider that this is not the final version, and it still may contain uncorrected errors. The book deals with three interrelated subjects. The first is the representations of Greek heroes, mainly Theseus and Heracles, on Greek and local Thracian artefacts of the Classical era. The chiselled and gilt imagery on the luxury silverware creations, mostly found in Thracian and Scythian tombs, served as vehicle of the Athenian state ideology and the aesthetic and philosophical quests of that time. This brings us to the silver toreutics in Athens, a long and heated debate, of which the book dresses a balance and reassesses the evidence. The last part is dedicated to the instrumentalization of toreutics by the Athenian gift-diplomacy in its effort to establish a political alliance, and to achieve economic control on the rich precious metal, timber, manpower, and grain resources of the Thracian lands.

THIS IS A PROMO-FILE INCLUDING ONLY A FEW PAGES AS A SAMPLE OF THE BOOK.
Title: Metal Vases & Utensils in the Vassil Bojkov Collection, vol.2.
Author: Athanasios Sideris.
Publisher: Thrace Foundation.
Editor: Ruja Popova.
ISBN: 978-954-92384-8-8.
Sofia 2021.
Pp. 428.
This is the second volume dedicated to the metal vases in the Vassil Bojkov Collection in Sofia (see herein vol. 1, 2016). It comprises 152 entries (cat. 147-298) of vases and utensils issued from the Thracian, Achaemenid, Greek and Hellenistic cultural domains, 105 of which have never been published previously. They are illustrated by 403 colour pictures and 195 drawings, complemented by 193 b&w pictures of parallels in other museums and collections. The time-span covered in this volume extends from the 11th to the 1st centuries BC. The volume comprises as well an extensive bibliography, three indexes, various lists and a map. It includes several unique or very rare pieces, such as a prehistoric gold kantharos, gold and silver phialae, several vases bearing dedicatory and other inscriptions, a new silver kantharos with figurative scenes, a bronze calyx crater, several silver rhyta with some outstanding exemplars decorated with a silenus figure and caracal protomes, as well as a unique silver plate with the representation of Aphrodite's birth from the ocean. The book will be soon available in Amazon.com or by addressing directly the Thrace Foundation.

This paper deals with the Classical Athenian bronze and silver ware found in Thrace and discusses the frame of their production, exchange and use within this specific cultural frame. HERE ONLY A SAMPLE. PLEASE, CONTACT THE AUTHOR IF INTERESTED IN THE FULL PAPER.

This article aims to give an exhaustive overview of the ancient Aramaic brief inscriptions of Southern Caucasia, from 6th century BCE to 3rd century CE. New interpretations are given to documents still little known but nevertheless very important for the understanding of Caucasian history during the Antiquity.
With an addendum about the short inscription of the silver cup of Saburt'alo (T'bilisi).
Updated on 17 December 2022.

This paper studies the motif of the palmette on Greek bronze ovoid situlae, mainly of the 4th century BC. It traces its origin through Late Archaic and Early Classical examples to Ionia and Athens and discusses the two principal groups named after the find-spots of two typical paradigms: the Vratsa and Waldalgesheim groups. A detailed typology of several subgroups is developed in the text and organised in a catalogue as an appendix. The spread of the motif on various toreutics and jewellery is documented from Hellenistic Bactria to the Celtic North and West, as well as in Thrace and Scythia. The paper argues that this wide diffusion of the palmette-and-scrolls motif owes much to the circulation in these areas of Greek metal vases, and especially of bronze situlae.

The paper is devoted to burial no. 19/2015 of Vinogradnyi 7 necropolis in the Taman peninsula. Its contents allow to attribute it to the time not later than the first decades of the 1st century BC.
        A special attention attracts a silver medallion, which was found upon the body of a woman aged 45–50. In the center of the plaque there is a bust of a goddess in calathus. Her veil is pressed to the chest with her right hand, in her left she holds a branch with a leaf, embossed in a high relief. Along the border 10 signs of the Zodiac are arranged executed in a lower relief. The closest parallel to the medallion is a piece in the Kerch Museum, which disappeared during the World War II. Only its photograph is available. The medallions depicting the bust of the goddess, her hand pressed to her chest belong to the well-known type popular the Bosporan kingdom as early as the 2nd century BC. Images of the goddess holding a leaf are found on brooches from the Kuban region and South-Western Crimea of the 1st–2nd centuries AD. The closest parallel to the pattern decorating the border is a silver phalera from the vicinity of Cossack village Kurchanskaya. In the centre it has the image of Aphrodite galloping on a goat and of Hermes standing in front of her. The medallion under discussion has a double loop soldered to the rear. This construction feature finds parallels on gold medallions with busts of Aphrodite and Eros from the Artyukhov burial mound.
          The signs arranged around the bust of the goddess are the signs of the Zodiac, among them symbols of Cancer, Gemini, Virgo, Pisces, Sagittarius and Scorpio are easily recognizable. Noteworthy, that there are 10, not 12 signs. Their arrangement does not correspond to the usual order of the signs of the Zodiac. The terracotta disc from Brindisi, regarded as the earliest depiction of the Zodiac signs in South Italy and Greece, deserves special attention in this regard. The medallion from the Taman peninsula and the disc from Brindisi have much in common. Both not only display less than 12 signs, both do not contain the Libra sign, some of the signs occupy not 30, but 60 degrees of the circumference, the signs are arranged not in the usual sequence.
        Silver medallions found in the Cimmerian Bosporos represent one of the oldest, if not the oldest, images of the signs of the Zodiac in ancient Greek art. Most likely, being arranged around the bust of the goddess in calathus with a leaf in her hand, they express the heavenly hypostasis of the goddess, most likely Aphrodite Urania. Whether the unusual number of signs and their order was a reflection of someone’s individual horoscope is problematic. The fact that we know at least two images of this kind, testifies against such attribution.
          The analysis of the burial inventory, taking into account the location of this burial within the necropolis, suggests that it was a separate area owed by some local family, and that the religious beliefs of those people were associated with Aphrodite Urania.

The article is devoted to the attribution of a silver bowl found at an early Medieval settlement at Oegstgeest near Leiden in the province of South Holland. B. van der Meer in a detailed publication examines the unusual history of its creation and alterations, reconstructing it in six stages from the time of creation between 350 and 420 AD till its votive offering in one of the tributaries of the Old Rhine around 725 AD.
          The observations given by the author allow to reconstruct the “early” history of the bowl from Oegstgeest in a new way. A silver bowl of the 2nd, possibly the first half of the 1st century BC, was decorated in the 1st century AD with images of “trees of life”, animals and circles with rosettes using the technique of mercury gilding. For the 1st century BC – 1st century AD this technique of decorating silver bowls is unique and characteristic of vessels originating from the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia in the Lower Volga and Lower Don regions. The closest parallel, both in style and technique, to the images on the inner side of the bowl from Oegstgeest are the images of two pairs of animals on two silver phialai from the remains of the funeral feast, dating no later than the third quarter of the 1st century AD, in the Burial-mound no. 11/1977 near Novoaleksandrovka on the Lower Don. Judging by the analogy with the images on the phialai from the Lower Don region and the “trees of life” cut from gold foil from Sarmatian burials in the Lower Don and in the Kuban region, this happened most likely in this region, and the work was done by a local craftsman. In this form, the bowl, if we proceed from the attribution of B. van der Meer, probably existed for almost half a millennium, until in the 6th – early 7th century AD it was equipped with mounts with suspension rings and an inner medallion, already made by a Merovingian craftsman.
      The phenomenon of finds of ancient objects, including those with traces of repair or alteration, is well known in later contexts (Greek keimêlia) and has been widespread in various cultures since the Bronze Age. If we associate the appearance of the bowl in the west with the waves of migrations, then we can assume that it could have ended up in the Rhineland with the Huns, who could have obtained it when robbing the treasury in the Northern Pontic region. Unlike spolia in architecture, which became especially widespread in the late Antiquity, the alteration of silver vessels and the creation of new items using elements of earlier ones became widespread in the Northern Black Sea area as early as the 2nd century BC – 1st century AD. For a later time examples of such alterations of Hellenistic silver vessels are not known to me, and this also stresses the uniqueness of the bowl from Oegstgeest.

Ancient hydriai made from bronze or other precious materials occupy an important place within the field of toreutic studies. These vessels, in addition to their principal purpose of holding liquids, were also preferred as containers for the ashes of the deceased, and so were placed in the graves of ancient Greeks in significant quantities mostly in the Archaic but also in the Classical period.
Present-day Turkey, ancient Asia Minor, has supplied a vast assemblage of a range of toreutic vessels from various eras of antiquity. In 2012 a new addition was made to this assemblage with the discovery of an exceptional bronze hydria in the necropolis of the ancient Aeolian city of Kyme. Carefully produced and richly adorned with a relief plaquette of Dionysos and Silenus, this vessel was first published several years after its discovery. However, it has yet to receive a full treatment, including a detailed comparison with other examples. This paper aims to rectify this situation by “re-identifying” the Kyme hydria through a wide-ranging study. Firstly, the vessel will be re-evaluated in terms of its find context, including assessment of the other finds recovered from the same tomb. There follows a detailed typological analysis in which analogies are drawn with contemporary metal vessels. This will help both to challenge the previously suggested use, production technique and date and to identify the possible origin of this vessel. Last but not least, comments are made on how this exceptional hydria might have found its way to Kyme and the significance of this within the wider world of Greek toreutics.

Keywords: Kyme; hydria; Dionysos; Silenus; late 4th century BC

The paper publishes a new vase of the Achaemenid amphora-rhyton type with zoomorphic handles, dated ca. 500 BC and attributed to a Lydian workhshop. It examines its spread and variations through the various local cultures of the Achaemenid Empire, as well as the possible influence on Greek toreutics.

The paper presents a Late Archaic bronze hydria found in the vicinity of ancient Sinope, and kept in the Sinop Museum director. It is an exceptionally well preserved exemplar combining characteristics of various well established Peloponnesian series. The lion head on the top of the vertical handle links the vase to a series popular since the third quarter of the 6th century BC and until the middle of the 5th century. The style of the Gorgo-head-shaped lower attachment of the same handle brings it closer to a series traditionally ascribed to Corinth. More details, such as the body covered with a chiseled-tongues pattern, and the palmettes of the lateral handles, serve to refine its affiliation to a particular workshop and narrow down its dating. Given the main distribution of related hydriae in the Greek mainland and the Balkans, the exceptional presence of this exemplar in the Sinope area may have been related to specific historical circumstances, or/and the development of trade routes along the southern shores of the Black Sea during the late Archaic period.

We analyze the Iberian bronze votive figures depicting armed males (better than ‘warriors’) in five successive levels: typological identification
of the weapons, chronology, functional panoplies, social characterization
and analysis of gesture as expression of ritual.

Estudiamos las figuras de varones armados, mejor que ‘guerreros’, en cinco niveles de análisis, desde la identificación de las armas, cronología, asociación en panoplias, la caracterización social de los exvotos y el análisis de la gestualidad ritual.

Amalthea’s broken horn became the iconographic origin of the horn of plenty (cornucopia), a symbol of eternal, divine living in various Mediterranean cultures. Moreover, the goat, as Amalthea (nourishing goddess), became the symbol of a prime mover in every physical and mystical conception – from ancient through historical to modern art. Ambivalent to the goat, the he-goat became a lunar and finally tragic animal associated with Dionysos and his festivals. It symbolized the power of vital force and fertile fire, which capriciously and swiftly changes into unpredictable gifts of the god. This is also the true aspect of his main art form – for tragedy.
Accordingly, the motif of a goat and/or of a he-goat is present in artistic expressions of “classical” south Balkan territory, while in its central and western part it appears only sporadically. This study will focus on the iconographic and semiotic interpretation of goat motifs on several luxury vessel-types, from dinos-craters to situlae and different types of jugs and their metonymies such as figural ornaments or decorated plates. In different temporal and spatial contexts, they were associated with lavish table services in which wine and other intoxicating (alcoholic) elixirs were mixed and served during various profane and ritual banquets, ceremonies and festivities. Special attention will be devoted to a bronze decorative plate from Osor on the island of Cres in Kvarner. Due to its typological and stylistic features, it is dated to the 4th century BC – in the period when Macedonian workshops massively produced luxurious items and distributed them to the North. This mostly applies to bronze vessels that, in every sense, were a reflection of the communications and propaganda of the elite of that time.

The Getty Villa holds one of the world’s largest collections of luxury silver vessels from the Parthian period of ancient Iran (ca. 238 BCE–ca. 224 CE). This article imparts several new insights into one of its most well-known objects: the stag rhyton. Discoveries include a new inscription on the vessel, technical observations from the first endoscopic examination of its interior, and a new correct weight. The main inscription has heretofore never been integrated into art historical discussions. In addition to presenting a new transliteration, transcription, and translation for the main inscription, this article establishes a more precise date for the vessel. The stag rhyton has served as an important point of reference for dating silver vessels from Hellenistic and Parthian Iran in collections worldwide. In several cases, however, the rhyton’s previously accepted date conflicts with other assessments. The new date range presented here may resolve such discrepancies. In addition, the article presents new corrected technical information for the Getty's two lynx rhyta, whose weights were recorded incorrectly in previous publications.

The book is the first of two volumes presenting an extraordinary collection of Greek and related metal ware. The present pdf comprises the introduction and only a selection of 11 vases out of the 146 gold, silver and bronze vessels included in the original volume. These luxurious artifacts pertain mostly to the Greek and Achaemenid cultural domains and range from the 8th to the 1st centuries BC. The book has 356 pages lavishly illustrated with 110 drawings, 388 colour pictures and 111 b/w pictures. Besides the rich bibliography (more than 800 entries), it includes three indexes (personal names, place names, and general index), and three folding geographical maps in a pocket, showing more than 500 cities and sites mentioned in the text. More than half of the vases are published here for the first time, including a series of masterfully decorated Attic silverware.

The general topic of this book is the analysis of Early Iron Age sheet bronze objects in central and northern Italy. The sheet bronze technique flourished during the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. in the areas of the Villanovan culture: i.e. Tyrrhenian Etruria, especially in the south, and Emilia Romagna, in particular Bologna and Verucchio. Main aims of this work is to analyse the major outcomes of the early central and northern Italian toreutic production from the beginning of the Early Iron Age, and to try to investigate, from an Italian perspective, the connections between bronze sheet artifacts produced south of the Alps with comparable models from Central Europe. Other principal purposes of the study are to identify production centers and to define and better understand the circulation of objects and models.
In the first chapter is a brief account of the important works on this topic by German-speaking scholars (G. von Merhart, H. Müller Karpe, A. Jockenhövel), who first noticed the strong connection between the Italic toreutic production and Central Europe. The second chapter is devoted to an overview of sheet bronze manufacture techniques from the points of view of metal composition, hammering of laminas, decoration and assembly, sheet width etc. The central chapters are dedicated to object classification and contextualization: helmets, and shields in chapter 3, and banquet and funerary vessels (biconical vases, cups and bowls) in chapter 4. In the end section bronze armour and vessels are analyzed in their original funerary context (warriors' graves) and then their ideological and symbolical meaning is investigated. The last chapter is entirely devoted to the discussion of economic aspects such as the identification of production centers and workshops, social status of craftsmen, and circulation of goods. I stress the emergence since the 9th century BC of local workshops centered in southern Etruria, especially at Tarquinia and surrounding centres. During the late Early Iron Age (8th century BC) a rising market exchange system can be postulated for small objects such as cups, whose production becomes more and more standardized . These phenomena of production standardization and production increase are related to the urbanization process of Etruria and surrounding areas in the Early Iron Age.

Кулешов Вяч. С. Серебро за меха из Страны мрака: памятники византийской, восточной и западной торевтики и нумизматики в сакральной экономике югорского общества V–XV вв. // Византия в контексте мировой культуры : Материалы конференции, посвящённой памяти Алисы Владимировны Банк (1906–1984) / Редакционная коллегия: В. Н. Залесская, Е. В. Степанова (научные редакторы) и др. (Труды Государственного Эрмитажа. [Т.] LXXXIX.) СПб.: Издательство Государственного Эрмитажа, 2017. — С. 363–372.

This is a booklet accompanying the 2018 Calendar published by Thrace Foundation, which presents in a general-public-format some silver vases from the V. Bojkov Collection. Some of them are thus far unpublished and will be included in the forthcoming: Sideris A., 2021: "Metal Vases and Utensils in the Vassil Bojkov Collection, vol. 2", Thrace Foundation, Sofia.

This article focuses on a 4th century BC tomb from the necropolis of Soloi, an important ancient city in northwestern Cyprus. The tomb,
together with five others, were revealed during a rescue excavation between 2005-2006. They supply us with evidence related to the Cypro-
Classical period of Soloi. The specific tomb that will be evaluated is distinguished from its contemporaries, especially by its rich inventory of
gold and silver jewelry and metal vessels. The tomb is characterized by three separate burial chambers that open to a rock-cut central courtyard
(prodomos). It supplies us with valuable information related to the sociocultural structure, internal and external relations of Cypro-
Classical Soloi as well as funerary beliefs and customs of its elite.

The article firstly gives a detailed structural and comparative analysis conducted to reveal both the spatial and architectural characteristics
of the tomb. This will be followed by a superficial, yet still informative, analysis of all the burials and their rich inventories. Last but not least, the burials and their inventories will be contextualized within the setting of
the 4th century BC Cypriot and Greek burial customs.

The course deals with the domain of small metal artifacts in ancient Greece. It encompasses bronze figurines (small scale sculpture), bronze and silver vases, cosmetic artifacts such as mirrors, and arms and weapons with elaborate decoration.
It examines the sources of material, the techniques of production, the workshops and styles, as well as the uses and the cultural context and significance of such artifacts.

This text summarises the current state of research into Roman metal vessels and confronts it with finds from the Middle Danube region. The occurrence of such metal vessels, connected usually with the elites, will be placed against relevant historical context, especially within the Roman Period.

The concept of skeuomorphism, meaning the imitation of a vessel shape and/or a decorative technique in another than the original material, is of particular importance for the study of the relations between the production of vessels in different materials. An important indicator for skeuomorphism is the reproduction of a particular trait of another object in the production of a new one, even if this trait would actually no longer be necessary or no longer serves its original purpose.
Morphological correspondences can frequently be identified between glass, ceramic and metal vessels from the Roman imperial period. The closer investigation of these reveals alternative interdependencies between glass and ceramics whereas unilateral influence seems only possible for the relation between toreutics and glass. It becomes obvious that the development and distribution of vessel shapes in different materials at different stages of the Roman Empire followed certain rules. These rules were dictated by the tastes of the customers, obviously subject to constant and dynamic changes. The evidence suggests that conscious or unconscious inspiration seems to have been at play more often than genuine imitation. However, some vessel shapes are so similar in different materials that one must assume a real and conscious imitation. This is particularly the case if both shape and decoration match.
Impulses from other materials in the production of glass vessels are noticeable primarily during the period following the invention of glassblowing in the first half of the 1st c. B.C. Especially in Italy where this technical innovation was not known until several decades later there was an enormous increase in glass vessel production, making necessary the employment of new shapes, previously unknown in glass. Equality of shape between glass and ceramic or glass and metal vessels, therefore, occurs particularly in the 1st and in the first half of the 2nd c. A.D. The fact that there are fewer parallels in later times is probably the result of the glassmakers increasingly developing own shapes and of such special shapes that were available only in glass being more and more appreciated.
The general development of the terra sigillata and glass vessel shapes was very similar during the entire imperial period. Analogous developments were taking place in both materials. So the artisans apparently followed the same general changing demands of the customers. In all material classes, however, only the shapes that could be made without major technical difficulties were adopted. For this reason there are many counterparts of vessels of other materials in the flexibly editable glass.
In many cases very similar vessels made in glass and ceramics are probably to be explained with a parallel imitation of toreutic models. However, due to the small number of preserved metal vessels these models are not always identifiable. This lack of tradition is the main reason for many results of this study being applicable only to glass and ceramics, but not to toreutics.
There is clear evidence that in ancient times a large number of vessel shapes were being imitated in a different material, but that the craftsmen included new elements in their work which were bound to this particular material.

The situla-shaped bronze vessels found in Central and Eastern Europe during the Iron age have been the subject of research for more than a hundred years. In 1951 the German prehistorian Hans Jürgen Eggers (1906–1975) defined several types of so-called “Roman import” objects. Until today it is common to use the typology developed by Eggers. The paper takes a closer look at three types of situlae (E18, E19 and E20) and tries to point out the problems identifying these types.